HOW WAR WOULD INTENSIFY TOVERTY 199 



wheat supply ; and as this would be the most eJi'ectual method of 

 bringinfi: En,<:;land (juickly to her knees, it is more thau probable 

 that such a course would be followed." 



What the People should Realise 



The deadly peril which besets the people of Great Britain in 

 respect hereto is that they cannot be brought to a realisation of 

 what that terrible passage — " lUtt would there he grain to convoy'': " 

 — means to tliem and theirs. 



It is always difficult to get a man who has dined well and 

 sumptuously to enter into and realise the full extent and mean- 

 ing of the term — suffering from the pang fi of hunger — while it is 

 just as difficult to make peo])le wlio, although not necessarily 

 rich, have, nevertheless, in a general way a sutficiency of food, 

 understand the meaning of — famine. 



But it is this word, and no other, which exactly expresses 

 the condition in which the people of this country would be 

 once war broke out between England and a powerful European 

 State — Germany for exam])le. 



The weakest link in our chain armour of defence is our 

 dependence on outside countries for the very food we consume ; 

 and it is this utter helplessness which constitutes our greatest 

 danger. It is this weak spot the enemy would strike at first ; 

 and, quite irrespective of the fact that we may continue to h old 

 command of the seas, the world's wheat supplies could be 

 " cornered " and held back from a starving peo])le — h]/ a fevj 

 smart and secret operations of the encmifs agents. Our own 

 vessels may be there ready to keep the seas open and to convoy 

 food supplies — " But would there he grain to convoy ? " 



One great cardinal fact stands out prominently, and it is 

 this — that once we were at war there would be a sharp rise of 

 prices in corn and all other food-stuffs, and all the Heels in the 

 world could not prevent it, because the operating factors would 

 lie beyond the influence of the nation, and consequently 

 entirely beyond the control of any Government. 



That this would be the case is testiiied to by the fact that 

 during the I'eninsular War corn was terribly high, in spite of 

 another fact that at that period we were not in the habit of 

 importing very much wheat, while our command of the seas 

 was complete. 



To again quote Admiral Harding Close : — 



'•If there was a period in the history of this country when we 

 might say we had comuiand of the seu, surely it was after the battle 

 of Trafalgar when lh';re was not one enemy left on the sea. Yet 



